On Harrow Hill

“Where am I supposed to bring this thing?”

“You’re referring to the drone?”

“No, my giant dick. The fuck do you think I’m referring to?”

52

The route to the north side of Harrow Hill, the Aspern side, took Gurney through a landscape darker, wilder, less inhabited than the Waterview Drive approach to the Russell side. It had—like the vast, forested rise of Harrow Hill itself—a lonely, forbidding quality.

It was a feeling that only grew stronger as he followed Aspern’s mile-long driveway up through the dense evergreen woods and into the sunless clearing that surrounded the house—a large, muddy-brown, shingle-style structure with a distinctly joyless personality.

After walking around it and locating an open porch that appeared suitable for launching and controlling the drone, he decided to go inside. The front door was, as requested, unlocked.

The interior was upscale and impersonal, more like a hotel than a home. Open desk and bureau drawers, as well as open cabinets and closets, were evidence of Slovak’s search for Aspern’s phone and bottle of wine. The place told Gurney relatively little about its late occupant—beyond his being conventionally expensive in his tastes, with no apparent interest in art, music, or literature. There were no decorative objects, no photographs, nothing frivolous or quirky. There was a stillness about the place, outside and inside—not the stillness of ordinary repose, but the stillness of a cemetery.

Gurney continued his exploration of the house until he heard the unmistakable growl of Hardwick’s GTO.

They met on the open porch.

Hardwick opened a large aluminum anti-shock carrying case and gingerly removed a serious-looking quadcopter drone, a controller, a tablet computer, a battery charger, three batteries, and a manual.

“This little mother is a twelve-grand piece of equipment. Carbon fiber construction. Hasselblad lenses. GPS and GLONASS satellite guidance. Retractable landing gear. Sixty-minute flight time. External monitor feed.”

“Should we start studying that manual, or did your contact give you instructions?”

“He did. Good thing, because the fucking manual is incomprehensible. If I can manage to remember what he said, there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance I won’t crash the damn thing.”

Hardwick plugged the controller and the drone batteries into the multiple-input charger and the charger into the outlet on the porch.

Gurney checked his watch. It was 5:10 p.m.

“How long does it take?”

“The man told me an hour. Hopefully he wasn’t full of shit.”

At 6:05 p.m. the red light on the charger turned green.

Hardwick set up the tablet as a supplementary monitor with a live video feed, inserted a charged battery into the drone, then moved the drone out onto the lawn. “What time you want to start surveilling the Russell place?”

“Seven fifteen should be good. Based on the text I sent her, Lorinda will be expecting the blackmailer at eight. If she’s bringing in help, there’s a good chance they’ll be arriving somewhere in that forty-five-minute window. Between now and then, you might want to do a practice run, get a feel for the equipment.”

Resting the supplementary tablet monitor on the wide porch railing, Hardwick manipulated the buttons and levers on the controller. The four drone propellers began turning. With a muted whirring sound, the drone rose slowly into the air until it was well over the height of the tallest trees in the area. With Gurney and Hardwick observing its progress on the monitor, it proceeded to the preset GPS coordinates of a location with a wide-angle view of the front and one side of the Russell house, the allée, and the open entry gate.

Gurney suggested that there was more than enough clearance above the treetops to allow the drone’s altitude to be lowered in order to see under the portico. Hardwick made it happen. After experimenting with a number of alternate angles and zoom settings, the device was given a return-to-base command, and three minutes later it descended gently to the lawn.

At 7:10 p.m., responding to Hardwick’s controller inputs, the drone rose again into the overcast sky and flew to its intended position.

The transmitting video was remarkably sharp. The low light level from the dense overcast had no effect on the vibrancy of the image. Even the darker area beneath the portico was clearly detailed.

For the next half hour, nothing happened. That changed at 7:41.

A black motorcycle bearing a leather-clad rider with a black helmet passed through the gate into the allée and proceeded slowly toward the portico. It was followed by another, then another, until a total of seven had entered the estate grounds. They continued in single file under the portico and around the front corner of the house.

Hardwick was giving the tablet screen a squinty look. “You figure one of those fuckheads is Gant?”

“That would be my guess. The helmets make it hard to tell.”